There Really Is No Place Like Home
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Slumber Party tag: He still doesn't think a bunker can be a home. But it wouldn't hurt anything to at least make it a little more...comfortable, right?


**There Really Is No Place Like Home**  
K Hanna Korossy

Sam stood in the doorway with his hands on hips, surveying the sparse space. There was nothing wrong with his room.

The mattress Charlie had complained about maybe wasn't the most comfortable to sit on, but Dean had actually chosen it for him to be purposely firm for his back and extra long, and he'd slept better on it than he had in years. There was a bookshelf containing dog-eared paperback mysteries, a Star Wars trashcan, and a framed picture of him and Jess on the desk, also courtesy of his brother, and a TV he'd installed himself. The walls and bedding were industrial off-white, but as long as the sheets weren't starched stiff, who cared? After getting a glimpse of Oz—like, the real deal, Frank Baum, freakin' _Oz_ —everything paled in comparison, anyway.

And it was a room in a bunker. A _bunker._ No one went all _Better Homes & Gardens_ on what was effectively a supernatural bomb shelter unless they were either crazy or desperate. Or really hungry for a home like Dean. Come to think of it, crazy and desperate both applied a little there, too.

Sam's arms dropped. Dean had taken moving in very seriously. He'd decorated his room with weapons and album covers and a model Impala Sam got him once, and set out a picture of Mom and their family on his desk, surrounding himself with all the things he loved. He'd gotten a _memory foam_ mattress and silk sheets—oh, yes, Sam had noticed the sheets—and a high-end record player and an area rug that didn't contain its own biosphere. There was a bookshelf stuffed with King and Vonnegut and a few other writers that had surprised Sam, and a handful of small treasures Dean had saved over the years were sprinkled around the room, with the slinky from Plucky Pennywhistle's in a prominent spot. Dean had made himself a home, made it his.

"It's fine, Sam," Dean said as he passed in the hall behind him. "It's jailhouse chic."

Sam frowned, studying his room again. Okay, yeah, there were jail cells with more personality; sadly, he would know. But so what? It was just a place to sleep. And there were a few lived-in touches. Mostly thanks to his brother, but still…

"Hey, you think we should do anything with Charlie's stuff?" came the holler from down the hall.

Sam turned to see Dean sticking his head out of the room they'd given Charlie. He raised his eyebrows in question, and Sam shrugged back. "She said she'd be back. Just stick it somewhere for now, I guess?"

Dean was turning her phone around in his hand, looking at it thoughtfully. "You think anybody will miss her?"

"Besides us?" Sam asked, leaving the study of his room to go join Dean. Charlie's mom was gone now, and she'd never mentioned any friends. "I guess if she doesn't come back for the mid-year Jubilee." The Moondoor people were surprisingly loyal.

"Heh, yeah." Dean tossed her phone into her backpack and zipped it up. "Hope she's having fun on her _quest_."

He was worried about her, Sam realized with a start. And not the way Dean worried about every civilian on the planet, but like family. Sam wanted to tease him about it, except…he kinda felt the same way. "Are you kidding? She's having a blast," he said with a grin.

Dean shot him a grin back. "Yeah, probably. And you saw the way she and Dorothy were making eyes at each other?"

Sam wrinkled his nose. "No. And neither did you."

Dean tried to wipe the expression off his face and succeeded only partly. "Yeah, no, 'course not." His smile slipped into something lecherously dreamy. "Yeah…"

"No, Dean," Sam said firmly, punching his brother's shoulder.

Dean quickly straightened, clearing his throat with an abashed look. "Right. Yeah. So, uh… You thinkin' about sprucing up your room?"

He fully intended to say no. Really, it was fine, everything he needed.

Maybe.

 _This is about as close to home as we're gonna get. And it's ours._

Instead, he found himself saying, "You want to help me?"

00000

He should've known better.

Dean was like a kid in a candy store. Or a Bed Bath & Beyond store; he'd actually known where the closest one was. Sam gave him a few parameters— _"No silk sheets, dude"_ —and let him loose. It was partly self-defense: he didn't want to spend the whole day discussing color schemes. But it was also partly the fun of watching Dean's pleasure in getting to feather a nest. For Sam.

He'd have teased his brother for it if he secretly hadn't been so touched.

"You're going to make someone a great interior decorator someday," he said when Dean brought the third set of _not-silk_ sheets to consult him about.

Okay, so he couldn't help a little teasing.

In the end, he was kind of astonished they only took two big bags home. The way Dean had been running around, Sam figured he was going to re-do his little brother's room from the ground up. But when Dean unpacked his finds at home, well, Sam realized should've known better.

There were two pairs of incredibly soft sheets in dark colors. A pair of desktop frames and a frog pencil holder. A lamp with a brighter bulb than the seventy-plus-year-old fixtures they had in the bunker. A small area rug, and an Escher print he'd caught Sam looking at. And, surprisingly, an iPod-compatible clock. And that was it. No pink "Princess" banner like he'd threatened Sam with at the store, no hair dryer, although, uh, maybe he'd pick up one of those someday…alone. No purple sparkly throw pillows or oversized teddy bears. These were all things Sam actually might've bought for himself.

Which was probably the point.

They set up everything together in silence, Dean studying the clock with a mechanic's interest, Sam running a hand over the soft rug when Dean wasn't looking. When they were finished, the room didn't have the cozy feel his bedroom with Jess had had, or the woman's touch he saw in so many homes. It didn't even look all that different from some motels they'd been in—the ones with better taste. But it didn't look sterile anymore. And Sam was already looking forward to sliding in between the Egyptian cotton sheets.

"It's not bad," he said with deliberate casualness, because Dean tended to shut down at anything effusive, and he watched his older brother beam. That alone made it worthwhile.

He still couldn't quite think of the bunker or his room as home, and not because of how it looked or felt or what they did to it. Home was the worn-in seat of the Impala, the open road, and his brother, wherever they were. Dean just across the hall made this where Sam belonged more than anything they could find in a store.

But it didn't really hurt to eventually mount on the wall a beautiful monograph he found in the archives. Or to fill the two desk frames with pictures of his family when he was a baby and of him and Dean sitting on the Impala's hood. Or to display the amazing carved ancient Japanese jade protection charm he'd always loved. It hurt surprisingly little when he realized this was more personalization than he'd done in his home with Amelia, or that it was the closest he'd felt to a home since living with Jess, or that what he'd started out doing for his brother he was now also doing for himself. And it didn't hurt one bit when Dean smirked without a word at every new addition.

It actually felt pretty awesome when he stole the Impala's old Kansas license plate out of Dean's room and put it up in his own instead, making his brother squawk.

Okay, maybe now he really was home.

 **The End**


End file.
